While Tom Brady deserved the Super Bowl MVP on Sunday night, a lot of people on Twitter wanted the honor to go to Tampa Bay Buccaneers’ defensive coordinator Todd Bowles, an integral member of one of the NFL’s most diverse coaching staffs this season. In addition to Bowles, Tampa Bay has three other Black coordinators: assistant head coach Harold Goodwin, offensive coordinator Byron Leftwich and special teams coordinator Keith Armstrong. The Buccaneers also have two women on the coaching staff, with Lori Locust serving as the assistant defensive line coach and Maral Javadifar as the assistant strength and conditioning coach. By winning the Super Bowl with this staff, the Tampa Buccaneers proved to the entire NFL world that minority coaches have a place in this league.
Unfortunately, diversity within the Buccaneers coaching staff is a rarity in the NFL. As of 2019, there were only three Black head coaches and only 10% of all coaches were Black, despite about 60% of the players being Black, according to areport by the Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport.This season’s coaching carousel did not do much to change the lack of diversity among head coaches, as only two minority coaches were hired for the seven openings: David Culley for the Texans and Robert Saleh for the Jets. More troubling was the fact that three deserving Black candidates, Eric Bienemy, Todd Bowles and Byron Leftwich, did not generate legitimate interest for the head coaching openings. Brandon Staley, who has been an NFL coordinator for only one year, got a head coaching job instead of Bienemy, Bowles or Leftwich. Staley represents a larger trend of white coaches with minimal experience getting head coaching jobs while coaches of color are not offered the same kinds of opportunities.Why were Doug Pederson and Matt Nagy more appealing than Eric Bienemy? Why were guys like Kliff Kingsbury and Zac Taylor better candidates than Byron Leftwich? Why did Mike McCarthy and Adam Gase get second chances while Todd Bowles has not? The answer is disturbingly obvious to me.
Even though Bienemy, Bowles and Leftwich were passed over for white candidates, there were still some bright spots during this hiring cycle. In addition to the hiring of Culley and Saleh, the Atlanta Falcons and Detroit Lions hired Terry Fontenot and Brad Holmes as their general managers, respectively. A number of minority coordinators were also hired, including Raheem Morris, Anthony Lynn, Lovie Smith, Sean Desai and Marcus Brady. The Washington Football Team has diversity at every level of the franchise, including team president Jason Wright, general manager Martin Mayhew, head coach Ron Rivera and assistant coach Jennifer King, as they join the Buccaneers in setting the standard for front office diversity within NFL franchises.
While these small wins should be celebrated, it is important that they don’t mask the unacceptable lack of diversity among head coaches and within NFL front offices. The Rooney Rule, created in 2003, originally required teams to interview ethnic-minority candidates for head coaching positions. In 2020, the rule was reformed to require head coaching interviews for two ethnic-minority candidates and at least one minority interview for general manager and coordinator jobs. Despite the expansion of the Rooney Rule and other initiatives aimed at improving minority representation, NFL owners have not done enough to increase the diversity of its head coaches and general managers. By essentially maintaining the status quo in terms of hiring, the majority of ownership and management groups demonstrated their disregard of the Black Lives Matter movement and all of the calls for racial equality this summer. By failing to hire minority head coaches and general managers, the NFL is missing out on some extremely talented and deserving candidates. Investing in diversity will simultaneously improve the NFL’s optics and its bottom line, which is all it cares most about anyway.
